Customer Reviews

Preventing Identity Theft in Your Business: How to Protect Your Business, Customers, and Employees

5 star:		(0)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

The main problem with this book is that the author has an 18-year background in industrial and organizational psychology - not particularly relevant to an issue that is primarily IT connected! Thus, her focus within the book includes a good deal of employee testing - for intelligence, interpersonal skills, etc., and then a very bland, unnecessarily broad, textbook approach to reducing exposure.

Collins claims that most identities are stolen from businesses by a few dishonest employees - not via "dumpster-divers" or online hackers. Perhaps. She also VERY BRIEFLY covers phishing (Internet and telephone), gobus payroll checks, and outsourcing payroll processing, as well as inherent difficulties in pursuing identify theft - involvement of numerous jurisdictions, shortages of investigative staff.

Topic is very important - however, it would be much better addressed through a reformed practitioner who has kept up to date.

Notes taken while studying for CPE credits by fcpas.org

copyrighted 2005

p2 Eye opener several sections detailing facts on why identity theft may never be completely eradicated.

p50 The author offers a "Seal of Information Security" upon a business completion of the exercises included in Part II & Part III of the book.

Additionally, this book includes an email address and telephone number for the ID Theft Crime & Research Lab to assist with questions.

The book offers some recruitment techniques as far as employee selection which in most cases include assessments tests. There is an emphasis integrating employee feedback and reward systems.

Chp 19 includes a footprint on how to set up web site security assessments for customers and employees.

Chp 23 reveals the background for the HIPAA database and the types of information gathered and the "accessibility given to hundreds of organizations that also have access to the database."

Overall, this book is a 5 but I gave it a 4 since after stopping on Chapter 19 there are approx 135 hours of "building blocks" tasks that must be performed to maximize the benefits of protecting a customer from identity theft. This is not an obstacle but IMHO the expectations would be that the building blocks would have to be done on a continuous basis while performing the normal business tasks. I think this could be mitigated in a large organization but in a small one this could be a barrier.

Based on research conducted at Michigan State University, this step-by-step, practitioner's guide shows you how to implement an identity-theft protection program. Author Judith M. Collins includes useful background information about the types and frequency of identity thefts and identity crimes. She emphasizes the steps your company can take to prevent and remediate identity theft. She also provides a chapter on "best practices" for customers and advises companies to include these best practices in their marketing materials. If your company is serious about dealing with identity theft, we recommend this book as an extremely useful guide.